As the U.K. heads to the polls next week, a majority thinks that leaving the EU was a mistake and has delivered few benefits—and new problems.
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Yes, but now the train has left the station. Great Britain had some very favorable conditions. Even if the EU and the UK were to come to terms, this special deal would certainly not happen again. It can’t get any better than it was, only less bad.
Found the German! The English equivalent of “der Zug ist schon abgefahren“ would be “that ship has sailed”. Which is pretty funny if you think about the geography of the UK versus the German speaking realm.
If only somebody saw this coming!
That’s surprising, it seemed like such a bad idea from the get-go, but who knew it would actually turn out that way? I’d say hopefully it can serve as a warning to other countries that might want to leave the EU, but the kind of people that would want to leave in the first place probably aren’t the kind of people to actually consider evidence anyways. I’m sure we’ll see this replay in other EU countries as these far-right, oddly Russian-friendly parties start getting into power and wanting to weaken the EU/NATO.
It did actually do that. The UK wasn’t even the most Eurosceptic country around the time of 2015/2016. (I.e. the aftermath of the refugee crisis where the EU took a severe hit in popularity across the union).
Anti-EU sentiment was huge around that time particularly in the UK, Latvia, Hungary, France, Greece, Spain and the Netherlands. Averaged across all members of the union, less than 50% looked at the EU favourably after removing “don’t know” answers (Eurobarometer survey).
The UK (or rather more specifically, David Cameron), was just the only one stupid enough to pull that kind of reckless political brinkmanship.
He thought that by calling the referendum and having Remain win (which is what polling indicated, plus he probably didn’t think Tory media would love Brexit so much considering he, the PM, was massively against it), UKIP would fall apart, anti-EU sentiment would subside, and the emergence of a competing right-wing party would be halted.
Logical, but a ridiculously high-risk game. He gambled the UK’s international standing on political games to help his own party.
By 2019, after seeing the ensuing shitshow that the Tories handling Brexit was, as well as the refugee crisis becoming a memory not an ongoing event, the EU had rebounded and hit its highest approval rating since 1983.
Many in Europe openly worried that Britain might actually succeed and provide a blueprint for other countries to quit the EU.
What?! Nobody thought that.
In the last two years, 2.4 million people have been allowed to come and settle in Britain, dwarfing any such influx before. The government is now tightening rules, but for many who voted for better control of the borders, it has come too late.
Disappointment is palpable here in Boston, where Polish supermarkets and delicatessens inhabit old Victorian buildings and teams of migrant workers in high-visibility vests work the nearby fields.
Because those people would be better off if no one was working the fields?
If any Britons wanted to work for the wages that immigrants take home, those low-paying jobs would be theirs immediately.
If any Britons wanted to work for the wages that immigrants take home, those low-paying jobs would be theirs immediately.
That’s a terrible framing of the situation. The opinion (rightly or wrongly) is that cheap labour from poorer countries sets the expectations for employment costs.
These workers will come for a season and live in horrific conditions with the expectation that although it’s low pay for Britain, its higher than the home country and they will take the cash out of the economy.
Brexit was a sledgehammer approach for people to say “no jobs should pay so low that you have to live a subsistence existence.”
Now whether it’s because farmers pay too low due to the supermarket purchase chain forcing the situation, cost of living is far too high or a mix of both, the fact of the matter is just saying “tHoSe LoW pAyInG jObS cOuLd Be ThEiRs” make you sound stupid.
There are a lot of problems with the British economy and even with the elections coming up, the opposition are not coming up with very good suggestions on how to improve the situation.
That’s a terrible framing of the situation. The opinion (rightly or wrongly) is that cheap labour from poorer countries sets the expectations for employment costs.
Point taken, partly: It’s not just the wages (and the accommodation) that are shite. The work itself is monotonous and physical.
If labor costs increase that may lead to automation to taking the place of migrants. That would mean a low number high-paying jobs for the well-educated rather than a large number of high-paying jobs for the poorly-educated.
Migrants who stay for longer to some degree bring their own jobs and economy with them anyway — all those Polish delis the article alludes to have Polish shop-owners. Without the migrants, there’d be no need for Polish shops.
Brexit was a sledgehammer approach for people to say “no jobs should pay so low that you have to live a subsistence existence.”
Just as much as Brexit was a viable approach to addressing NHS financing, I guess. The EU never stopped the UK from enacting sensible social or sensible healthcare policy. But I understand some people may have been duped.
(Happy Cake Day!)
Yes, it is a complete trainwreck.
And only 51% of people who voted, around 25% of the population, were in favour so it’s unsurprising that you can find large sections at this point who would be unhappy with the situation. It’s not necessarily Bregret, we didn’t want it in the first place.
Brexit was a viable approach to addressing NHS financing
You have to also remember that Brexit was a cross party matter. Tories gonna Tory with their made up numbers, but also the head of the Labour party was pro-Brexit since the unfettered access to the Labour market weakened the unions positions. It was only in the later stages that he rather weakly positioned himself as pro-EU because better a weakened position with the EU than a weakened position without the EU to back you up if you have a Tory government.
sensible healthcare policy
NHS gutting is due to austerity and unregulated privatisation rather than Brexit. I’m not aware of anyone who believed the Boris bus, mostly because I don’t know of anyone who believed a word of what he said. Conservatives who did vote Boris mostly appear to have liked the way he “owned the libs”.
If labor costs increase that may lead to automation to taking the place of migrants
Maybe. But only if you take a single point and follow it exponentially without implementing anything else.
The pound is vastly overvalued and needs to be brought down. That would improve exports and the value of the work, potentially allowing people to do these jobs without it requiring them to live in poverty. Also, perhaps these aren’t jobs that should exist at this point? We also don’t have people lighting the lamps in London, and pressing the bellows by hand in the steam ships. I don’t think it’ll come to that because I’ve seen the automation available for soft fruit harvesting, and there are limited situations where they are suitable.
Not that any of this matters as none of the parties have taken away any lessons from this mess, so I don’t really see how Britain will be able to recover for a generation.
Sorry, but I just get offended when people call us stupid. A lot of us didn’t want this, FPTP means that over the past decade we’ve had major Conservative control even though the majority of voters didn’t want them. Hopefully you can understand that a lot of us are stuck with a situation that we didn’t want. Hopefully if we can be a bit more empathetic to the reasons people made poor decisions in the past, we can help offer better choices in the future.
A lot in the UK knew that this was practically an inevitable outcome it’s just a shame we had to go through it rather than people just listening to reason.
This is what happens when you have a democracy though sometimes the democracy chooses to do truly mind numbingly stupid things. What are you supposed to do, don’t do them, but that would be undemocratic. It’s a tricky one.
This is going to be europe at the next european elections, when everything turns out to have become shittier than it was. “Europeans now regret their populist revolt”
Need to show this to the Texas separatists.
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